The conduct of Mr. Peabody, as well as the evidences which he gave of his remarkable capacity for business, in this crisis, placed him among the foremost merchants of London.  He carried on his business upon a large scale from his base of operations in that city.  He bought British manufactures in all parts of England and shipped them to the United States.  His vessels brought back in return all kinds of American produce which would command a ready sale in England.  Profitable as these ventures were, there was another branch of his business much more remunerative to him.  The merchants and manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic who consigned their goods to him frequently procured from him advances upon the goods long before they were sold.  At other times they would leave large sums in his hands long after the goods were disposed of, knowing that they could draw whenever they needed, and that in the meanwhile their money was being so profitably invested that they were certain of a proper interest for their loans.  Thus Mr. Peabody gradually became a banker, in which pursuit he was as successful as he had been as a merchant.  In 1843 he withdrew from the house of Peabody, Riggs & Co., and established the house of “George Peabody & Company, of Warnford Court, City.”

His dealings were chiefly with America, and in American securities, and he was always regarded as one of the best specimens of the American merchant ever seen in London.  He was very proud of his country; and though he passed so many years of his life abroad, he never forgot that he was an American.  In speaking of the manner in which he organized his business establishment, he once said:  “I have endeavored, in the constitution of its members and the character of its business, to make it an American house, and to give it an American atmosphere; to furnish it with American journals; to make it a center of American news, and an agreeable place for my American friends visiting London.”

It was his custom, from his first settlement in England, to celebrate the anniversary of the independence of his country by an entertainment at one of the public houses in the city, to which the most distinguished Americans in London were always invited, as were also many of the prominent men of Great Britain; and this dinner was only discontinued in deference to the general celebration of the day which was afterward instituted by the whole body of Americans resident in the British metropolis.  In the year 1851, when it was thought that there would be no representation of the achievements of American skill and industry in the Great Exhibition of that year, from a lack of funds, Mr. Peabody generously supplied the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, which enabled the Commissioners to make a suitable display of the American contributions.  Said the Hon. Edward Everett, alluding to this act: